GREENSBURG IS STATE-OF-THE-ART
Facility May be Imitated by Other Transportation Agencies
By Joseph Agnello

The maintenance center built for the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission's Greensburg Bypass in Westmoreland County won rave reviews during its first year of operation. If imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, more accolades are on the way.

"Greensburg is the best maintenance facility on the entire Turnpike system and it should be because it's the newest," said Nicholas J. Skezas, Building Facilities/Equipment Analyst at the Turnpike's Western Regional Office in nearby New Stanton. "It facilitates performance. That's exactly what it was designed to do."

The $4 million Greensburg Maintenance Building opened in July 1996 near the north end of the Amos K. Hutchinson Bypass (Turnpike 66). It is built atop what originally was designated as a controlled waste area for excess dirt and rock that was excavated as the 13.5-mile expressway was being built.

It's the state-of-the-art "home field" for a team of 11 equipment operators and two mechanics who work to keep the Greensburg Bypass and its five interchange areas in the best possible condition. That means making sure the nine trucks and various support vehicles housed at the facility are ready to go full-throttle at a moment's notice.

"When you have a crisis, you just respond to it," said Skezas. "We're very pleased with the functionality of this facility. The flow-through approach was a whole new concept for us too. It seems to work out really well."

Some two dozen Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials toured the 16,000-square-foot facility in March on the first morning of PENNDOT's annual Spring Equipment Maintenance Meeting. This year's three-day conference was hosted by PENNDOT Engineering District 12-0, based in Uniontown, Fayette County.

The visitors were impressed with the sheer size of the building - the height and width of the various bays that provide optimum opportunity for getting vehicles in and out quickly - and with the repair machinery and tools available to workers.

A cabinet-style sandblaster can be used to clean brake shoes, springs and other dirty and/or rusted parts. There's the drill press, steel cutter, ban saw and grinder. The repair bay boasts a huge, in-floor truck hoist as well as a 12.5-ton overhead hoist and a two-ton swing arm hoist.

Air, water, motor oil, hydraulic fluid and grease can be applied easily from overhead dispensers high on the wall near the top of the 24-foot ceiling in the main garage.

"Your facilities may be hindering your output, what you want to do," Greensburg Maintenance Foreman John Montani told the guests. "There's plenty of room here. The work is easier because of the general layout and logistics of the facility. Even our Donegal shed, built in 1967 and one of our newest 'old' sheds, is nothing like this."

PENNDOT's Equipment Division Chief Ronald D. Doemland said his agency is negotiating with developers to relocate many of its present sheds and that it will look to incorporate many of the features of the Turnpike's Greensburg building. "We haven't build a new (maintenance) garage since 1964," he stated.

Skezas noted that maintenance workers assigned to the Greensburg Bypass worked out of an old food warehouse for two and a half years after the expressway opened.

He said Turnpike officials got a glimpse of what could be done at a new maintenance building when the Turnpike renovated and expanded the Homewood shed at Milepost 10 in Beaver County a few years ago. That facility serves a portion of the Interstate 76 mainline and the new 17-mile Beaver Valley Expressway (Turnpike 60 in Beaver and Lawrence counties). Homewood is the only shed within the 100 miles of District I that has been upgraded.

Typically, on the Turnpike mainline, there are maintenance garages every 25 miles. The standard workforce at each garage is 15 equipment operators and two mechanics.

Skezas said the Greensburg facility will serve as a prototype for maintenance buildings that are built to serve other new Turnpike operations such as the Mon/Fayette Expressway.

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